–Raising Wages:Tim Fernholz explains why Japan and the U.S. want to see higher wages. “The advanced economies, of which the US and Japan are the two largest, are in the midst of a bout of low inflation—below the 2% target set by both countries’ central banks—that has economists warning of a need for change. The International Monetary Fund’s Christine Lagarde has been beating this drum for the last several months, fearful that slowing inflation will exacerbate the large debt burdens carried by advanced economies and make it harder for corporations to finance their operations. Neither one has good implications for ongoing global growth, especially as emerging markets appear to be the losers in the global hot money game.”

–Mortgage Delinquencies:Bill McBride charts the big drop in mortgage delinquencies. “Freddie Mac reported that the Single-Family serious delinquency rate declined in December to 2.39% from 2.43% in November. Freddie’s rate is down from 3.25% in December 2012, and this is the lowest level since February 2009. Freddie’s serious delinquency rate peaked in February 2010 at 4.20%. These are mortgage loans that are “three monthly payments or more past due or in foreclosure.”"

–Luxury Goods: The Economist illustrates the biggest buyers of luxury goods. “Despite declines in sales to Japanese and European shoppers last year, the global luxury-goods market grew in 2013 to reach almost 220 billion euros ($300 billion). Chinese are still the world’s keenest buyers of bling, accounting for about 29% of total global spending last year, but an ongoing anti-corruption campaign has greatly dampened sales at home. Sales growth on the mainland slowed to just 2% in 2013, down from 7% a year earlier. But the binge continued elsewhere, as some two-thirds of luxury purchases by Chinese last year were outside of the mainland. And not all in nearby Hong Kong or Macau either: a fifth of those Chinese purchases were made in Europe. Over a third of all luxury sales last year took place on the old continent, home to many of the world’s most famous purveyors of luxury goods, even though Europeans themselves made up only a fifth of global sales.”

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